Innovating at the Heart of Money

I like people. A lot. I like their stories. I have a couple of my own.

I describe myself as a global citizen, taking a chameleon approach to my working life, proactively building a stash of rich life experiences.

My career started in risk which led to Wall Street and later to McKinsey & Company, a leading consulting firm, and into Australian private equity, but I’ve founded businesses as diverse as a white water rafting company in Maine, a business creating bridal gowns in Pennsylvania and an online auto-parts retailer in Australia.

I’ve travelled the world, climbing its icy peaks and bicycling over 45,000km across twenty-five nations including Australia, India, Indonesia and northern Africa.

I’ve been communicating, problem solving and transacting with the top-end of town and the poorest of the poor throughout my life.

Gold has delivered impressive returns to investors over the long run. Since 2000, gold has kept pace with Australian housing prices as an asset class.

On Wall Street I worked under the precipice of the fathers of financial engineering in the pre-GFC days, riding to work in a town car, attending black tie dinners and consuming cocktails late night in the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Plaza. At first I looked up to these people, Nobel prize winners among them, but then they collapsed Long Term Capital Management, losing $4.6b, requiring a bailout from the Federal Reserve.

I realised that I was potentially part of the problem, not the solution, and I wanted out.

I took an 80% pay cut and migrated to Australia, a place that could not be further away from New York City.

I contrast my experiences on Wall Street with my experiences climbing and bicycling in some of the world’s most remote regions. I learned that happiness, empathy, and graciousness were relatively abundant in that ‘end of town’ – in stark contrast to my experiences in many financial districts.

I realised it was money that was broken – financial markets, means of exchange, currencies, wealth distribution – and had been for some time.

It’s more and more expensive to operate in cash. It’s costly and slow to transact overseas. It’s becoming complex to even own a financial asset and fiat is losing buying power every day. Many believe another global crisis is looming.

It’s never been about the customer, but about lining corporate pockets and supporting political elections.

The gap between the wealthy and everyone else is the widest it’s ever been and getting wider. Just one percent of Australians own more than seventy percent of the country’s wealth.

I want to disrupt that historical reality.

With SendGold, we wanted to make it dead simple to own an asset, so we turned to gold. In fact we’ve turned gold back into money!

Gold is the only investment asset that has survived every war, calamity and economic crisis in history.

It’s stable, universal and naturally scarce.

Gold has delivered impressive returns to investors over the long run. Since 2000, gold has kept pace with Australian housing prices as an asset class.

With SendGold, we wanted to make it dead simple to own an asset, so we turned to gold. In fact we’ve turned gold back into money!

People around the world, from housewives in India to the big banks and major investors, choose gold because it’s a great investment to own in both good times and bad.

Anchoring SendGold in Australia made sense too, given we have a long historical association with the precious metal and are the world’s second-largest producer.

With SendGold you can save it, gift it, pay with it and soon, spend it.

We may not change the world but we want to make a difference for people who are not satisfied with global money printing, planned inflation and the potential for another global crisis.

I want SendGold to be earth’s most accessible digital money for real people who want to sustain their buying power. In a world with declining human connection and a growing chasm between the haves and have-nots, we’re building digital money that is hyper-liquid, hyper-accessible, personal, and based on a real asset, with 100% title to the physical gold.

Money has not been doing its job, but our customers now have a chance to own, save and transact with an alternative. They are paying attention. They love technology and many work in the finance industry across Asia Pacific. They understand the importance of owning an asset. They like that they can buy gold simply in small increments and build their asset balance up over time.

We have scored some hard yards getting ready for prime time across technology, compliance and risk management. Now our focus is to make our platform available around the world. This takes time, given our strict compliance policy, but we can currently cash out in 140 currencies and are busy rolling out 350 inbound payment types. Our longer term goal is all about solving everyday problems for our increasingly global customers at a low cost and with heart, adding back the human factor in transactions, even when cross-border.

Money is headed in a new direction. We are part of that movement. We have an exciting product with a growing network effect and we are ready to scale. Focusing on people and their stories the entire way.